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Date: Sat, 21 Feb 2026 20:31:46 +0530
Message-ID: <CANLbj-rM3-iwOEDt+7mEbAn1WKQVhrHKv9SbQJLod_-gQALfsA@mail.gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] [RFC IDEA] Deprecate legacy type alias functions
To: Jordi Kroon <jordikroon@me.com>
Cc: internals@lists.php.net
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From: ayesh@php.watch (Ayesh Karunaratne)

> is_double, which is an alias of is_float
> is_integer and is_long, both aliases of is_int
> doubleval, which is an alias of floatval
>
> For reference, is_real was deprecated in PHP 7.4 and removed in 8.0.
>
>

Hi Jordi,
The mailing list thread you linked is the only discussion I could see too.

That thread raised a valid concern, that the number of code search
matches is quite significant. We need a strong rationale to deprecate
a function. Functions that are not thread-safe, buggy, insecure,
overloaded with different signatures, or simply no longer necessary
(such as those resource close functions) are quite easy to argue that
deprecating them will lead to a positive outcome.

`is_double|integer|long` functions are purely aliases, and they have
been there in PHP practically forever. Code search results also yield
quite a lot of matches, so deprecating them will add a lot of work to
the package maintainers and users with little to no benefit. We
normally remove the deprecated functions by PHP 9.0, so for thousands
of packages, they cannot simply ignore these deprecations; they become
hard blockers to use PHP 9.0 (assuming you propose to remove them in
PHP 9.0).

Thank you,
Ayesh.